Three Words
by hydref05
Summary: Josh has something to tell his mother. An angsty little fic.


**Three Words**  
Josh has something to tell his mother --Josh and his mother, some ensemble -- Spoilers for Noel & ITSOTG  
Disclaimer: If Josh doesn't belong to me then I guess his mother doesn't either, but I hope no one minds if I borrow them and take them on an angsty journey.

* * *

**White House**

"You got a minute?" CJ asked Josh as she walked into his office and closed the door.

"Apparently," Josh replied. "So what have I done?"

CJ sat down and handed him the print-out she'd taken from an obscure internet news site. "Read this."

Josh took the paper off her and started to read the article. It was about what the reporter called, 'The Beltway Secrets Conspiracy', which, apparently, was orchestrated by The White House Communication Department to cover up scandals and secrets in The White House and OEOB. "Toby and Sam are gonna love this," Josh smiled.

"Sixth paragraph."

Josh scanned down the page. "Oh great," he sighed, "I'm in a conspiracy."

"You are," CJ agreed. "What do think?"

Josh shrugged. "The guy can't spell traumatic," he replied. "CJ, I don't want to ruin your day, but I don't think my PTSD is that much of a secret anyway."

"You don't?"

"No. I'm fairly sure that other people would have noticed me acting a little... you know, that Christmas. Also, you really think me being locked in a room with Stanley Keyworth for 9 hours went un-noticed?"

"Probably not, no." CJ was relieved that Josh didn't appear too concerned by the article.

"We do need to see Leo though," Josh added.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Twenty minutes later Josh and CJ sat in Leo's office and waited for him, Sam and Toby to read the article. Occasionally Toby would sigh and Sam would shake his head.

"This is complete crap," Sam said.

"You think?" Toby replied.

"Not complete," Josh pointed out. "I do have PTSD."

"Yes," Toby agreed. "But we haven't hatched some elaborate plan to cover it up."

"Not to mention that everything else in the article is complete crap," Sam added.

"So it's likely no one will pick up on it," CJ said.

"It may make people think," Toby told them. "Make them start digging."

"At what," Sam asked,

"At Josh," Toby replied.

"There's nothing to dig," Sam told him. "Medical records are confidential."

"Yeah," Toby replied. "And it's not like we've ever had to deal with a case of them being leaked before. All I'm saying is..."

"Well don't," Sam told him.

Leo interrupted before Sam and Toby had chance to start fighting. "What do you think?" he asked Josh.

"That it's not that big a secret," Josh replied. "You think it'd affect the administration if it was public knowledge?" he asked.

"No," Sam said.

"It shouldn't," CJ replied.

"Toby?" Josh asked.

Toby looked a little awkward, once again he was being called upon to be the bad guy. "Some people may try and make it an issue," he said. He saw Sam about to launch into a defense of Josh, and cut him off. "We have to face the possibility. But we've dealt with worse, so no, I don't think it would harm us in the long run. For now we should leave it alone and see what happens, although we should be prepared in case it becomes a thing."

"A thing?" Sam asked.

"Toby's right," Josh cut Sam off. "We need plan."

"And you're okay with this?" Leo asked.

"Yeah. I'm not ashamed to have PTSD and if someone does get my records they'll show it's under control," Josh replied. "I do need to talk to my mom though."

"She doesn't know?" Sam asked.

"No," Josh agreed.

"How can you not have told your mother, I mean..."

"Sam!" Leo sighed. He turned to the others, "Let me know what you come up with. Josh wait behind. Ruth doesn't know?" he asked Josh once they were alone.

"No. It's not an easy thing to tell your mother."

"Well you're gonna have to, because she doesn't need to see it on the internet or read it in the press. Talk to her."

"You're ordering me to talk to my mom?"

"I'm saying, I can't believe you'd let her find out from the press that her son has PTSD." Leo knew what Josh's reservation were though. "You don't have to tell her everything. Just tell her about the shooting part, there's no need to tell her the rest."

"I guess."

"Although you're wrong. I was there, Josh, you're wrong."

"You weren't there, not when I told them," Josh replied. "I'll speak to you later."

Leo watched Josh walk away. He may not have been there the afternoon Josh told his parents what had happened that Monday evening just before his ninth birthday, but he knew what Josh was referring to. Children don't understand that their parents are human, are fallible; but Josh was an adult now, surely he realized that those three small words had been spoken in haste, in hurt and emotion. Apparently Josh still believed his mother had meant them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"How'd it go?" Donna asked as she followed Josh into his office.

"It's fine, stop worrying, it's not going to be problem. Except now I'm going to have to tell my mom."

"Your mother doesn't know?" Donna asked.

"Not unless you told her."

"I wouldn't... Why haven't you told her?"

"It's complicated."

"She's your mother, you two are close. I don't understand."

"That's right, you don't understand." Josh really didn't want to get into a discussion about the reason he hadn't he told his mother. Leo understood, but no one else would, not without the explanation he wasn't sure he could give. "Don't you have any work to do?" he asked.

Ten minutes later a remorseful Josh appeared in front of Donna's desk. "Sorry," he said. "It's just not fun to have everyone discussing you like you're... yet another problem."

"That's not how we see you. At least it's not how I see you," Donna told him.

"I know. You got a minute and I'll explain." Josh returned to his office, with Donna close behind. He closed the door and sat down. "I haven't told her because my therapist thinks it goes back to the fire."

"Yeah I know that, so why...?"

"I'm telling you. My trigger is music because my PTSD is associated with sirens, not gunshots." He paused and stared into space for a second before continuing. "After the fire I couldn't listen to music for a long time. At first, every time I heard anything remotely classical I could smell smoke, hear the fire... the sirens. After a few weeks it stopped, but classical music still upset me."

"You had episodes when you were a child?" Donna was horrified at the thought of a child going through that.

"No, well not like after Rosslyn. I knew I wasn't in the fire, I knew I was in the mall or at school, I could just hear and smell things."

"Because your sister liked classical music?"

"Yeah, but mostly because while we were in the den, she had an LP playing of Schubert, he was her favorite, especially the Ave Maria," Josh smiled sadly. Then he frowned again. "It was playing as she shouted me. I can still hear that you know, if Ave Maria's playing and I close my eyes, I can hear her shouting me above the music."

Donna didn't know what to say to that, so she sat quietly and let him continue.

"I'd run back to the den because I was scared and she came and got me. By then the fire had spread, we had to go through the house to get out. She made me go in front this time, told me to keep going, to run and she'd be right behind. When I got outside, she wasn't there, I couldn't see her. I wanted to go back, but I didn't."

"You were a kid, you were eight, you did what your sister had told you."

"She didn't tell me to leave her behind," Josh snapped.

"It wasn't your fault," Donna insisted.

"Maybe," Josh conceded, more to please Donna than anything else.

"I don't understand, how does that stop you telling your mom about the PTSD?"

"She blamed me," Josh shocked Donna by saying, "they both did."

"Your mother doesn't blame you..."

"Trust me, some things you don't forget and they blamed me. If I told her about the PTSD, I'd have to talk about the fire and I can't do that. I did it once before and I can't do it again."

"I'm pretty sure she..."

"Donna, just leave it."

"You have to talk to her, Josh."

"It's not something you do over the phone."

"Then I'll get you a flight," Donna replied.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

An hour later Josh walked into Leo's office and hovered in front of the desk. After a few seconds Leo looked up. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Josh nodded. "Donna thinks I should go and see my mom."

"She's right."

"I know," Josh reluctantly agreed. "She's booked me on a flight at 4.15. Will it be alright if I leave early? I've no meetings, so..."

"It'll be fine," Leo replied.

"Okay." Josh looked like he wanted to say more, but changed his mind. "Thanks," he went to leave the office and then hesitated and turned back to face Leo. "You think she'll be angry with me?"

Leo had to smile at that. Josh sounded like he was ten years old again.

"I mean," Josh continued. "Would you be angry if Mal didn't tell you something like that?"

"Angry, no. I might be a little hurt though."

"Yeah," Josh nodded. "Yeah, I guess."

"She'll understand," Leo assured him, although he wasn't sure she would. "But you should tell her everything."

"It's that easy?" Josh asked.

"I know it's not easy, Josh, but you can't keep putting this off. And you're still wrong," Leo added.

"You keep saying that, but..." Josh hesitated and chewed his lip. "She just stared at me, Leo, all she said was, 'you left her', then she turned away from me."

"I know, your dad told me. But you ran out of the room, out of the house, before either of them had a chance to talk to you and after that you refused to discuss it. She was upset, Josh, people say things in haste when they're upset."

"Things you say in haste are usually exactly what you're thinking."

Leo shook his head. "And you've never said something when you were upset or hurt that you'd give anything to take back?"

"Of course I have," Josh replied, well aware that he had a tendency to lash out when he was upset.

"You don't think if your mom could have taken those words back she would have? She wasn't accusing you, she didn't blame you then and she certainly doesn't now. She knows you think she does though."

"I was eight, Leo. It took me days to pluck up the courage to tell them." Josh shook his head and blinked back the tears that were threatening to fall.

"Talk to your mom, Josh. It's been far too long."

"I don't know if I can."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Florida**

When Josh had called to say he was coming to Florida and could he stay, his mother had be pleased, if a little suspicious. Now he was here she knew her suspicions had been right, something was bothering him.

"Josh, don't take this the wrong way, but why are you here?"

"Can't a son visit his mother?" Josh asked with a small smile.

"He can, but he hardly ever does. One phone call a month is usually more than I can hope for," Ruth smiled.

"I'm a bad son, what can I say?"

"You can tell me what's going on."

Josh joined his mother on the sofa. "I do need to talk to you. It's nothing bad, don't worry, I just need to talk to you."

"Something you couldn't tell me over the phone?"

"Something I should have told you over two years ago, I just didn't know how."

Ruth felt a pang of fear. "Are you okay, you're not ill? The doctor said..."

"No," Josh stopped her. "No, honestly I'm fine. The doctor's pleased with me. It is connected to Rosslyn though. There's a story on the internet about me. It might not get picked up, it might come to nothing, but I wanted to tell you rather than have you see it in the news. I should have told you at the time."

"What's happened?"

Josh hesitated for a brief second, before beginning the story. "Four months after the shooting I started having nightmares, flashbacks. It got pretty bad," he admitted. "Leo made me talk to a therapist from the American Trauma Victims Association. We talked all day on Christmas Eve two years ago. He diagnosed me as suffering from post traumatic stress disorder."

Ruth took his hand. "Ah, Josh, you should have told me. You could have talked to me."

"I know I should have, but it's not something I'm proud of."

"It's not something to be ashamed of either. I'm your mother, why couldn't you tell me?"

Josh considered lying, making up feeble excuses, but instead he told her the truth. "Because with gunshot victims the trigger for an episode is normally a sudden noise, like a door slamming or a car back firing, but that's not it with me. It took my therapist a few sessions to find out why and then it all fell into place for her, although I'd already worked it out. I knew as soon as Stanley Keyworth told me."

"I don't understand."

"Music," Josh said as he turned to face his mother. "My trigger, the thing that can trigger an episode for me, is music, specifically classical music. My mind was associating music with sirens."

Ruth stared at her son. "Joanie," she said.

"Yeah. It seems that everything comes back to you at some point in your life."

"Josh," Ruth said through tears. She gently touched Josh's face, before pulling him to her and hugging him. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Josh was confused. "Why? It's not your fault."

"Why didn't you tell me two years ago?"

Josh shrugged and chewed his lip. "I don't know. I wasn't ready I guess."

"And now?" Ruth asked. "No, it's okay, I know the answer. If you didn't think it was going to be in the papers you still wouldn't have told me."

"Mom..."

"It's alright, you've never been able to talk to me about it. I do know why."

Josh heard the catch in his mother's voice and felt remorse wash over him. "I never meant to hurt you, it was just too hard."

"You don't think it was hard for me?" Ruth asked. "Watching you beating yourself up, shutting yourself away from us."

"I didn't do that," Josh protested. "I've always included you and dad in my life."

"Yes, you have," Ruth agreed, "in every part of your life but one. You built a wall around everything to do with Joanie when you were eight and you never let us past it."

Josh could feel tears in eyes, tears that matched the ones on his mother's cheeks. "It hurt too much," he said. "It hurt to even think about it, let alone talk."

"I know it did, but talking might have helped."

"I was a little kid, I didn't know that then." Josh held back on pointing that he did try to talk to them once and look what had happened.

"And I didn't help, I know. I've never regretted anything more than that you know. I wasn't accusing you..."

"Don't," Josh tried to interrupt.

"I wasn't."

"That was how it sounded," Josh stood up and walked across the room.

"Joshua, don't do this. Every time we start this conversation you get up and storm off."

"Because I don't want to have this conversation," Josh replied angrily.

"Well maybe I do," Ruth's voice held almost as much anger as Josh's. "There's nothing I can do that can change what I said. All I can tell you is that I don't blame you, I didn't then and I don't now. God, Joshua, if you'd have stayed with her..." she shook her head and took a steadying breath, before standing and walking over to her son. "If you'd stayed, you'd have died. I couldn't have stood that and neither could your father. I know you wished you'd gone back, I know how hard you struggled to get them to let you go back into the house and I thank God that they wouldn't let you go."

"And if I'd left when she told me to?" Josh asked.

Ruth had always been troubled by Josh's apparent need to blame himself, not just for Joanie dying, but for anything that went wrong. He had a need not to let people down that seemed to be the driving force of his life.

"What if your father and I hadn't gone out?" she asked. "What if we'd come back an hour earlier, ten minutes earlier even? What if we'd never bought the popcorn maker?"

Josh shook his head, "You can't say that, you can't possibly blame yourself."

"But you can?" Ruth asked. "Why are you allowed a monopoly on blame?"

The answer seemed obvious to Josh. "Because I was there. I left her."

And there were those three words again, slightly different, but the same. Ruth wondered, as she had done for over 30 years, whether Josh would blame himself as much as he did if she'd never spoken those words. "It doesn't matter what I say does it?" she asked. "We're never going to get past that."

Josh didn't know how to respond. He had tried when he was younger to believe what his parents, his grandfather and even Leo had told him. He'd tried to believe that his mother hadn't meant what she'd said, or she hadn't meant it as it had sounded, but it wasn't that easy.

"I'm sorry," Ruth said.

"It's fine," Josh replied. "I just, I can't talk about it. Not just to you, to anyone. I can't handle how it makes me feel. I know after years of therapy I should be able to, but I can't. This is why I didn't tell you two years ago, because I knew neither of us could handle talking about it."

"Okay," Ruth's voice was barely above a whisper and Josh knew he had to try harder that this.

"Mom, don't get upset."

"No, you're right," Ruth told him. "But since your father died, who do I have to talk to?" she asked.

Josh was shocked that that had never occurred to him. How had he not realized, he who was so adamant that family and friends were the most important thing, the thing that should never be let down. How hadn't he realized that his mother might actually need to talk about his sister.

Ruth saw Josh's expression change. "It's okay," she told him. "I know you don't want to," she added a silent, 'at least not with me.'

Josh knew what she was thinking though. "I still miss her you know," he suddenly said. "I don't even remember her that well, but I miss her. Is that strange do you think?"

"No, it's not strange. You two were close, you drove each other mad, yet you were inseparable."

Josh smiled slightly. "I don't mind talking about her," he offered, "in fact it'd be good to talk about her, and dad and grandpa."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Josh nodded and realized that it was true. "Let's have a family night; me and you and the photo albums."

"You hate me getting the albums out," Ruth said with a smile.

"Only when you insist on showing them to other people," Josh replied. "Come on, we'll go out and get something to eat first."

As mother and son got ready to go out, it occurred to both of them that nothing had really changed; they were still avoiding talking about how Joanie had died, but they both realized that they always would.

END


End file.
